For those of you with short memories, or born after us fogies (as you’d probably refer to us!), the British heavyweight scene used to be a thing of embarrassment, desperation, and total humiliation. Despair and shame were the order of the day, as British heavyweights seemed to spend more time flat on their backs than a hotel full of hookers, so feeble were they on the world scene. Openly laughed at and derided as bums, the failures of Britain’s heavies cast a long shadow over the game in Britain in general, all British fighters were seen as a soft touch by the Americans, an unfair assumption maybe, but one British boxers were having a hard time dispelling.

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